Projects for the 90th anniversary of Erik Bulatov opened in Nizhny Novgorod and Vyksa

Projects for the 90th anniversary of Erik Bulatov were opened not in the capital’s grand museums, as one might expect in connection with the anniversary of the living classic of modern art, who lived most of his life in Moscow, but in Nizhny Novgorod and Vyksa. In the Warehouse on the Nizhny Novgorod Strelka there is an exhibition “Horizon” – a digest of Bulatov’s paintings of different years, from the mid-1960s to the 2000s, and in the Museum of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant they are separately showing his new painting “Between Light and Flame”, painted last year . Visited exhibitions Igor Grebelnikov.

Now for us these are Bulatov’s words, stretching into the sky in perspective, or words written on top of landscapes, or words without any pictures, which have become powerful graphic figures, guardians of the picture space – an already accomplished reality, a classic of art. But for their time, these experiments were a desperate step, especially for a certified socialist realist painter, who even managed to receive an increased “Stalinist scholarship” during his first years at Surikovka.

The miracle of creative transformation, which happened to Bulatov more than once, could become the main plot of the anniversary exhibition. But so far this has not happened.

The exhibition “Horizons” on the Nizhny Novgorod Strelka is collected exclusively from textbook paintings by Bulatov (its curator is Marina Loshak). The organizers soberly assessed their capabilities: the premises – a new fashionable exhibition hall at the confluence of the Oka and Volga – are small; There are only twenty paintings (they are from private collections, with the exception of one – from the Tretyakov Gallery) – and they decided on a bold exhibition design.

In fact, this is an installation, albeit by the artist and architect Yuri Avvakumov. The brightly lit, white parallelepiped of the hall is divided by a number of partitions, each with a large painting by Bulatov hanging on both sides, the distances between them are small, and in order to look at one painting, you stand with your back almost close to the one hanging opposite, thereby preventing others from looking at it to the spectators.

Perhaps such a layout should enhance the optical, physical discomfort that you experience when looking at Bulatov’s paintings: the realism of these images is not that deceptive, it is destroyed by the artist, and with the same techniques that create the picture. Even if this is a landscape that is initially pleasing to the eye, it is as if ripped open by the word “Caution”, twice applied to its surface, going, according to the law of perspective, deep into the canvas, as in Bulatov’s 1977 painting of the same name. It is important to pay attention to the years of creation of the paintings: although the artist always shunned the “spite of the day,” he always showed exceptional sensitivity to his time (or timelessness). Here is “The Artist in the Plein Air” (1968): his friend Oleg Vasiliev is lying down, but in fact he seems to be floating in weightlessness in front of a painted landscape, and the background is geometric abstraction – the quintessence of the “thaw” freemen. And here he is, depicted again in the painting “The Wanderer” (1990–2003): a man in rubber boots with a staff wanders along a typical Russian sloppy road, images of the RSFSR coat of arms seem to evaporate above his head.

Sometimes this tightness is too noticeable: between the black and white “verbal” paintings “That’s it” and “Black Evening, White Snow” (both 2000) you feel as if in a millstone, and not so much poetic (these are quotes from Vsevolod Nekrasov and Alexander Blok), how many are visual: letters and words are arranged in strict perspectives, and if you take into account the year the paintings were created, then a fatal meaning appears in them. However, not everything is so gloomy in this selection of paintings: the long life of the master with changes in locations, moods, impressions organically continues in art and once again convinces that there is nothing more constant than change.

It may seem strange that Bulatov’s anniversary is celebrated with an exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, since he was formed as an artist in Moscow, where he lived most of his life, and for the last 30 years, already in the status of a world-recognized classic, he has lived in Paris. There he celebrated his 90th birthday (see interview with him in Kommersant on September 5), complaining in a conversation with Kommersant that now his paintings have been removed from the permanent exhibition of the Pompidou Center, that there is a big retrospective, planned for the anniversary in the St. Petersburg Manege, fell through, and also said that his exhibition was being prepared by the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum (but for now it is temporarily closed due to renovations).

It so happened that Bulatov’s last major project in his homeland is connected with the Nizhny Novgorod region. In October 2020, the artist came to Vyksa to personally open a gigantic 2.5 thousand sq. m. m, a fresco on the facade of one of the workshops of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant. This mural, created on the basis of his paintings: “Stop – Go” (1974), which is an alternation of these words, and “Barn in Normandy” (2013), became the third in the Industrial Street Art Park on the territory of the plant. The two previous murals were painted by famous contemporary “street artists”, but next to them Bulatov’s wall does not at all look like a “tribute to the master”. His fresco is designed in such a way that close up it is difficult to immediately see it in its entirety: it confidently commands the viewer, giving first one order – to stand, then another – to walk, then it turns its gaze to the idyllic landscape on the right, then to some darkness on the left (it turns out that this is the same landscape, but painted at night). Bulatov’s works in public spaces look like a development of his signature painting techniques: only now the words “cut” into the real environment. How can one not recall his giant sculptural composition of red letters – “Forward”, installed on the terrace of the Tate Modern gallery for the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution (those were the days!).

But even in a world that has changed greatly since then, Bulatov does not fall into depression. One of his last paintings, “Between Light and Fire,” is shown in the Museum of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant: it is a self-portrait created from the memories of his trip to Vyksa. Wearing a pandemic mask, a factory hard hat and special headphones, he photographs the production, surrounded by roar, darkness, and melting metal. A compelling image of artistic resilience.